The Silver Spoon for Children - and easy garlic & olive 'focaccia'

My hatred of cooking with the children has been mellowing apace, and half term week last week was an opportunity to poke that little bug bear of mine and find it less irritating than it has been, and actually rather enjoyable. 

It has come about that with the move to the new house, we no longer have a dishwasher. Well, actually, we now have 2 new and incredibly reluctant dishwashers, Blue and Pink. Based on the rule that operates in the Recipe Junkie household that if you don't cook, you wash up, there has been a veritable stampede towards the kitchen pre-dinner. 

The breakthrough for me addressing my horror of cooking with the children has, I think, been the move away from baking WITH me, from Blue wanting to concoct utterly over the top and unrealistic creations and Pink with her "call me when it's time to lick the bowl" approach, to them both wanting to cook actual meals, WITHOUT me . Baking is my solace, my relaxation, my treat, whereas I cook meals every day of the week, and much as I enjoy it, it's nice to have someone else do it every now and again.

And so here we are, and while on one hand I am wishing time would stand still, that they wouldn't grow up, that Blue wasn't starting secondary school in a mere 3 months' time, that Pink wasn't obsessed with pop stars and needing me to have Mother-Daughter chats about growing up, on the other I am positively delighted that in this area, they are becoming more confident.  Both still require a certain amount of oversight/supervision/intervention in the kitchen, especially when it comes to such things a draining hot pans of pasta, but I'm trying really, really hard not to take over, to take a back seat and to let them get on with it, and the results have been pretty impressive.

While Blue has been perusing more adventurous recipes, fuelled mainly by the constant ravening hunger of an 11 year old boy, Pink, who's a stickler for following instructions for things like this, has been keen to find 'children's recipes' and I've been particularly impressed with The Silver Spoon for Children book which she was given for her 9th birthday recently. 

40 recipes taken from the adult version of this seminal Italian cookery book, simplified and aimed for children as young as 9 to be able to manage with minimal supervision. It's a big, colourful and sensible book with real food in it, good basics as well as some good 'techniques' to learn. 

Food-wise, the book includes 4 sections, lunches and snacks, pasta and pizza, main courses and desserts and baking. The recipes are lots of good basics, and recipes that build on each other - for example pizza dough, then pizza margherita, followed by pizza napoletana and sausage pizza. It might not seem very adventurous, but it's a good sensible approach and for kids trying to cook on their own, very straightforward.

The only things I'd like to have seen would be a list of equipment for each recipe alongside the ingredients ("Mummy! I need a LID for this PAN") and also a time estimate at the outset, but in fairness, it's good for encouraging children to read through the recipe all the way to the end before even donning an apron. Pink also found it difficult to follow the recipe steps across the double spread, which meant she kept jumping from step 3 to step 7, rather than crossing to the next page for steps 4, 5 and 6, but the pictures/steps are numbered, so that probably says more about her than the book...

Pink has so far selected to make a tomato and mozarella salad - hardly rocket science, but lots of tomato slicing and talking about ingredients, and then yesterday, a 2 course meal: spaghetti with tomato sauce followed by stuffed peaches.

Unfortunately, my phone died so I can't bring you pictures of the finished article, but it was delicious. Both the spaghetti and tomato sauce, and the stuffed peaches for dessert.

I was particularly dubious about the peaches, requiring as it did, the stones to be removed fairly neatly, eggs to be separated and various bits of fiddling about, but she managed it pretty much single-handedly. And did I say everything was pretty fool-proof and delicious? It is. I'd definitely recommend this if you're thinking of buying a cookery book for a 9/10 year old who's interested in cooking proper food.

And what did I add to proceedings (apart from being sous-chef, occasional crisis manager and sauce stirrer?) well, to stop myself from interfering too much, I made a quick 'focaccia' type bread to go with the spaghetti and make it more of a Sunday dinner. I am not in any way claiming this to be a genuine focaccia - for a start it doesn't have nearly enough olive oil in it - but it's a good filler and pretty darn tasty, as well as being quick and easy to knock up. It's also good with a sharp cheddar cheese the next day...

Olive & Garlic sort of 'Focaccia'

1 sachet easy blend yeast
2 tsp caster sugar
400g strong white flour
100g semolina flour
2 tsp fine sea salt
3-4 fat cloves of garlic
black olives
leaves picked from a good 5/6 sprigs of thyme
sea salt

You'll also need a tray bake tin around 30 by 23 cm with sides around 4 cm, and some good olive oil or rapeseed oil

Measure around 325 ml hand hot water into a jug, stir in the yeast and sugar and leave for a few minutes.

Combine the flours in a large bowl with the salt.

Gradually stir the yeasty water into the flours to make a rough-ish dough, then tip out onto a work surface and knead for 10 minutes or so till you have a smooth dough. You can also knead in a mixer.

Leave the dough in a warm place to rise - it shouldn't take too long, may be 30-40 minutes, then take your tin and generously lug olive oil into the bottom - may be a tablespoon's worth. 

Shape the dough into a rectangle in the tin, cover and leave for another 20 mins or so, and get the oven on to pre-heat to 230C.

While the dough is on its second prove, peel and finely chop the garlic (bash the cloves first with a rolling pin, it makes it easier to peel them - a tip I learnt from The Silver Spoon for Children), chop up the olives into halves. 

After 20 minutes or so, stick your fingers into the puffy dough to make lots of dimple-like indentations then scatter over the chopped garlic and olives, the picked thyme leaves and a sprinkling of coarse sea salt. Glug some more oil over the top, then pop in the oven and bake for around 15-20 minutes till golden and delicious.

Beef & Chorizo Casserole

Ironic, I guess, and perhaps not entirely straight, that while I have been posting about having been a year in Wales, I am, in fact, in London, with the kids, staying with a great friend. We are combining collective childcare, boxing and coxing with various work commitments, taking the kids out and about, and of course catching up and enjoying mutually supportive gin drinking... I've also been seeing something of my littlest nephew, who, conveniently, lives a 15 minute walk (with his parents - my youngest brother & his wife - of course) from my friend.

Our children (mine & my friend's) are similar in age and get on pretty well, so it's working out, and I think they are having a good time. Friend and I have also managed to stay on top of work that we couldn't complete in advance of half term, so everyone's a winner, although sometimes, it can feel a little crazy. As you can imagine, half term and museums in London can be pretty chokka. 


Early is good, but getting everything done and everyone organised and out of the house can be a mission. 

This morning, for example, between us, we'd reviewed a complex legal document (friend), scheduled social media posts for a client (me), knocked up a packed lunch for 6 and put a casserole in the slow cooker, not to mention negotiated breakfast, and the getting dressed, teeth brushing and leaving the house with 4 lovely but ever so slightly scatty under 12s, and made the train to Waterloo by 9.20 a.m. for a day at the Imperial War Museum...

Slow cooking is a total boon for this sort of day - when you return home culturally replete but, let's face it, knackered, all you need do is knock up some mash (or just soak some couscous, or slice up some bread) and bingo, dinner.

Beef & Chorizo Casserole

Serves at least 4 hungry children and 3 adults

1 kg casserole steak
plain flour
1 pack 12 mini cooking chorizo
about 20 shallots
5 medium carrots
2 cloves garlic
sunflower (or other) oil
2 * 400g tins cherry tomatoes
2 beef stock cubes 
2-3 tsp cornflour

Pre-heat the slow cooker. My friend has an infinitely superior slow cooker to mine, with a timer and a warming setting. Marvellous!

Put the steak in a bowl and sprinkle a couple of spoonfuls of plain flour and a couple of grinds of salt & pepper over it.

Halve the chorizo sausages, peel the shallots, peel and chop the carrots so they are similar size to the chorizo. Peel and finely chop the garlic.

Heat  a tablespoon of so of oil in a medium-large frying pan and start off gently frying the chorizo pieces. Add in the carrot and garlic and fry gently for 5 minutes or so before transferring to the slow cooker. If necessary add a little more oil to the an, then brown off the shallots and add to the slow cooker.

Finally, brown off the beef (use a little more oil if you need) in small batches, adding to the slow cooker. Boil the kettle.

Once all the beef is added to the slow cooker, tip in the 2 tins of cherry tomatoes, crumble the stock cubes into one of the empty tins, fill with water, pour into the other empty tin, then add the beefy, tomatoey water into the slow cooker, stir everything round, pop the lid on and cook on low for 8 hours or so.

Go out for the day.

When you return, mix up 2-3 tsp of cornflour with a little cold water, add in some juice from the slow cooker, then tip the whole lot back into the slow cooker for an hour or so to thicken up. Do not sprinkle the cornflour directly into the casserole or it will go lumpy.

Make mash potato, soak couscous, boil pasta, whatever you want to go with the casserole - frankly whatever you have the energy to produce - and serve.

Pour yourself a g&t if you haven't already...